TYNECASTLE STADIUM UPGRADE POTENTIAL - UEFA category 4 granted ( updated/merged )

[jamboinglasgow]

8 hours ago, maroon66 said:

Not seen the application yet mate but I've been told one of them is on the inside of the main stand next to the old police box,if that makes sense.

 

I would imagine if that is the case then the other will be on inside of the Wheatfield next to the Roseburn stand.

 

But if the application has been submitted on Friday then I suspect it will be up on the council planning portal by the end of this week.

[davemclaren]

18 minutes ago, Section Q said:

Budge said a single tier was all our budget could afford.

a double tier doesn’t give you any more seats with the same height/depth unless the top teir overhangs the lower. 

[Section Q]

On 25/04/2022 at 08:49, davemclaren said:

a double tier doesn’t give you any more seats with the same height/depth unless the top teir overhangs the lower. 

Anne must've worked that one out for herself then....👍

[WheatfieldWarrior]

5 hours ago, soonbe110 said:

Not sure there are any issues with Roseburn. 1500 max away fans at any game including segregation, a few structural adjustments to the access and exit from away part of the stand and we are left with 18-18,500 seats for home fans.  Plenty for a good few years. 

 

The concourse in the Roseburn can already be divided using the metal shutters that are in place. 

 

We have had hearts fans in the Roseburn before many times. 

 

[WheatfieldWarrior]

11 hours ago, Nookie Bear said:

Stick a bike lane through the concourse and they will allow anything. 

 

 

[gregzy2k7]

If we were to fill the corners In at Tynecastle, I wonder what that would take our capacity up to? I would guess around 23/24k ? That would probably be enough for us for the foreseeable future imo.

[soonbe110]

4 hours ago, gregzy2k7 said:

If we were to fill the corners In at Tynecastle, I wonder what that would take our capacity up to? I would guess around 23/24k ? That would probably be enough for us for the foreseeable future imo.

There is only one corner that can be filled I think. Memorial garden, police control box and emergency vehicle access take care of the other three. 

[soonbe110]

9 hours ago, Bazzas right boot said:

 

I think the opposite, I'd cut hibs back to give us more but if we are doing that we are losing money and it would mean it's very tight even for Hearts fans to see us. 

 

Surley best to increase capacity to get more Hearts and potential fans in and give the away fans a reasonable amount, that is the way you grow and make more money. 

 

We aren't quite there yet imo, but a repeat of this season might see us reach that point. 

 

Even 3000  (£30 av ticket) extra fans 6 times a year is over £500,000k

 

It's not chicken feed. 

 

 

After vat is deducted your £500k is £400k and that is chicken feed compared to the £25m needed to rebuild a stand.  Maybe long term but at the moment that money is easily recouped with a £20/25 increase in season ticket prices. Don’t understand why there wasn’t an increase of circa 5% this time round. Could be wrong but I think we are still frozen at 2018/19 or 2019/20 price levels. 

[Bazzas right boot]

18 minutes ago, soonbe110 said:

After vat is deducted your £500k is £400k and that is chicken feed compared to the £25m needed to rebuild a stand.  Maybe long term but at the moment that money is easily recouped with a £20/25 increase in season ticket prices. Don’t understand why there wasn’t an increase of circa 5% this time round. Could be wrong but I think we are still frozen at 2018/19 or 2019/20 price levels. 

 

That's only for 6 games ( I was being Conservative) if we've grown to the stage where Tynecastle needs expansion we could have more games that are over our current 20k which adds more. 

Not to mention European games, it could easily be 10 + games, if inflation is factored in even at 2% then that figure grows again. 

Add in catering as well. 

 

You could also  lose a whole community or section of possible Hearts fans and all what that brings if they are locked out. 

Very short sighted imo. 

 

Expansion is the way to grow our fan base and income-if we get to that stage, not hiking up season ticket prices while alienating any future possible Hearts fans. 

 

We are a repeat of this season of having this problem imo. 

20k was always going to be tight for a successful Hearts side. 

It could all go to shit on the park tho and we'll be ok. 

Edited April 25, 2022 by Bazzas right boot

[Bazzas right boot]

8 hours ago, Bozi said:

The thing is, Tynecastle on a good day, is a bear pit,  with the stands full, the fans in good voice and the atmosphere electric there really is no stadium like it.

 

The Big games, we could probably sell out a 30k stadium easy and have the place absolutely rocking...

 

But it's the Ross County, Kilmarnock, Dundee United games...these are the ones where our 20k limit and 16k fans inside the stadium make the real difference over a season.

 

There is little point adding 5k seats unless we can keep the bear pit feeling all season, no point adding 5k seats if we are only going to sell out when Celtic TheRangers,Hibs come to Tynecastle if we lose the essence of the stadium 

 

 

 

I get the point but 10k even for those games is massive, £1.8m, add in catering etc and with  European games will be over £3m a season extra. 

 

10k is a Bit too much imo, but to grow and make more money the stadium would have to expand if we were at max most weeks and locking out away fans to accommodate our own. 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 25, 2022 by Bazzas right boot

[soonbe110]

47 minutes ago, Bazzas right boot said:

 

That's only for 6 games ( I was being Conservative) if we've grown to the stage where Tynecastle needs expansion we could have more games that are over our current 20k which adds more. 

Not to mention European games, it could easily be 10 + games, if inflation is factored in even at 2% then that figure grows again. 

Add in catering as well. 

 

You could also  lose a whole community or section of possible Hearts fans and all what that brings if they are locked out. 

Very short sighted imo. 

 

Expansion is the way to grow our fan base and income-if we get to that stage, not hiking up season ticket prices while alienating any future possible Hearts fans. 

 

We are a repeat of this season of having this problem imo. 

20k was always going to be tight for a successful Hearts side. 

It could all go to shit on the park tho and we'll be ok. 

Ifs and buts, nothing concrete. We didn’t need a bigger stadium during the Vlad glory days. Maybe in the future we will. First things first though. Two or three seasons of top 3 in league and euro football to Xmas and beyond and then maybe it will be time to expand. Given the current economic climate anyone taking on a major building project needs their heads examined. How many football clubs are currently expanding or rebuilding their stadia? 

[Poseidon]

4 minutes ago, soonbe110 said:

Ifs and buts, nothing concrete. We didn’t need a bigger stadium during the Vlad glory days. Maybe in the future we will. First things first though. Two or three seasons of top 3 in league and euro football to Xmas and beyond and then maybe it will be time to expand. Given the current economic climate anyone taking on a major building project needs their heads examined. How many football clubs are currently expanding or rebuilding their stadia? 

I think we did need a bigger stadium then, we had a waiting list for STs. 

 

Agree with you on us needing to consolidate for now and not lok to build anything in this climate

[droid]

Did someone mention Big Screens?

[John Rambo]

Some good posts here, decent reading.

 

We are well on our way to creating/increasing demand; continued success, high placing in the league, Cup wins, European group stage football, will only fuel the need for increased capacity.

 

To complete consistently with the uglies in Glasgow, we need to close the revenue gap. Theirs is 9/10 times ours and while there will always be a Leicester City, Montpellier and FC Twente, such league wins are few and far between.

 

To really go after the title on an annual basis the only way is increased revenue. If we can cut the gap down to 3/4 times, then we have a fighting chance. The only way I can see that happening is if we have more supporters attending an increased capacity Tynecastle. While the club has increased non matchday revenue over the years, we will hit a ceiling soon I believe. Prize money for 3rd in the league, Cup final, European football all helps, but not enough to close the chasm which exists.

 

We sold 22,000 for the semi. What if those all became season ticket holders? We have many hard core fans, what if the 'casual' supporters starting attending more? It will maybe take a few years of sustained, relative success but we may need a few extra seats, perhaps 5,000 to 6,000, in the near future.

 

Could we even fill a 30,000 capacity Tynecastle in the next 10 years? Could it be expanded within the current confines?

 

Costs nothing to dream as my late Grandfather used to say. For the time being, dreaming about my European tour will do for now!

[Lfhearts]

12 hours ago, FarmerTweedy said:

You said the board should be sacked if they don't have plans in place for an expansion of Tynecastle to a 40k capacity. 

 

I'll just leave this particular conversation at that!

Lunatics taking over the asylum yet again.

[Unknown user]

22 hours ago, Jambo92 said:

 

When? I've never been aware of one. If it was ages ago then I'd wager it would be much more popular now.

I don't remember, it was a thing though.

[Bazzas right boot]

3 hours ago, soonbe110 said:

Ifs and buts, nothing concrete. We didn’t need a bigger stadium during the Vlad glory days. Maybe in the future we will. First things first though. Two or three seasons of top 3 in league and euro football to Xmas and beyond and then maybe it will be time to expand. Given the current economic climate anyone taking on a major building project needs their heads examined. How many football clubs are currently expanding or rebuilding their stadia? 

 

I've Always said it's not a priority now, but we could very well be faced with an issue in a, season or two.

 

The football part needs to come first tho and  like you say it will probably need a few seasons of success and consistency. 

 

Also, Any major change is ifs and buts. 

Hate when folk use that as a reason not to progress or change things. 😊

 

Also, I don't think anyone is saying we should start expanding now 

[davemclaren]

10 minutes ago, Bazzas right boot said:

 

I've Always said it's not a priority now, but we could very well be faced with an issue in a, season or two.

 

The football part needs to come first tho and  like you say it will probably need a few seasons of success and consistency. 

 

Also, Any major change is ifs and buts. 

Hate when folk use that as a reason not to progress or change things. 😊

 

Also, I don't think anyone is saying we should start expanding now 

History tells us that the chances of improving on,  or  even maintains, our current level of success for anymore than a few seasons is low. We can but hope/dream though. 

[Mysterion]

16 minutes ago, Bazzas right boot said:

 

I've Always said it's not a priority now, but we could very well be faced with an issue in a, season or two.

 

The football part needs to come first tho and  like you say it will probably need a few seasons of success and consistency. 

 

Also, Any major change is ifs and buts. 

Hate when folk use that as a reason not to progress or change things. 😊

 

Also, I don't think anyone is saying we should start expanding now 

 

Having a vision and planning are essential. Like you say - no one things we should be trying to rebuild a stand in the next 12months. 

 

The vision and planning have to start though - it begins by making the offer to buy the old high school. Without it any sort of clever update to Tynecastle is a non starter. 

 

Honestly - I do believe that in my lifetime we could legitimately build the support to be around 25k and peak the bigger games at 30k. 

 

[Fort Vallance]

15 hours ago, soonbe110 said:

Don’t get the argument that you would rather have Hibs fans at tynie rather than Hearts fans for a derby match. Having season ticket money in May is much better than getting a few extra pounds 11 months later, if we actually do? (Hibs have almost certainly budgeted on us visiting in May but we won’t).  
Highky unlikely that Hibs would ever give us anything other than a full stand at ER.  Cutting off their nose to spite their face if they do. 

Never done that before have they ?

[Poseidon]

6 minutes ago, Fort Vallance said:

Never done that before have they ?

Don't know if that's a rhetorical question or not but yeah, they have cut ours on the rare occasion we've done it to them 

[Sooks]

If we cut Hibs allocation in order to sell more season tickets to Hearts supporters their fans would scream for them to respond in kind but I doubt Gordon would do it because their crowds are so poor

[Mr Sifter]

On 24/04/2022 at 12:35, maroon66 said:

Application submitted to the coucil on Friday to erect new screens.

Surprised this has been posted without any reply. I’ve just checked the council website and there’s nowt there

 

Edit - Do you mean an application will be submitted THIS Friday? 🤔

Edited April 25, 2022 by Mr Sifter

[Sooks]

We should get one of those giant screens that they had at Festival square a few years back and stick it in the plaza have a wee outdoor bar set up pre matches :- D

[maroon66]

9 minutes ago, Mr Sifter said:

Surprised this has been posted without any reply. I’ve just checked the council website and there’s nowt there

 

Edit - Do you mean an application will be submitted THIS Friday? 🤔

It has to be validated and payed before it's in the public domain.

[EIEIO]

1 hour ago, davemclaren said:

History tells us that the chances of improving on,  or  even maintains, our current level of success for anymore than a few seasons is low. We can but hope/dream though. 

History does tell us this @davemclarenbut our financial stability and indeed strength should make previous comparisons irrelevant. Even when we had Romanovs money we had terrible management of the team and throughout the whole club. We are better placed to maintain the gap between ourselves and the rest than ever before. Closing the gap on either of the uglies is more difficult but not impossible.

[davemclaren]

2 minutes ago, EIEIO said:

History does tell us this @davemclarenbut our financial stability and indeed strength should make previous comparisons irrelevant. Even when we had Romanovs money we had terrible management of the team and throughout the whole club. We are better placed to maintain the gap between ourselves and the rest than ever before. Closing the gap on either of the uglies is more difficult but not impossible.

We need to have plans for several different eventualities. Some club have thrown money at stadium redevelopments (  or new builds ) only to find themselves hitying the skids on the pitch and then have significant financial issues. I’m just advocating a cautious and incremental approach. 

[Bazzas right boot]

1 hour ago, Mysterion said:

 

Having a vision and planning are essential. Like you say - no one things we should be trying to rebuild a stand in the next 12months. 

 

The vision and planning have to start though - it begins by making the offer to buy the old high school. Without it any sort of clever update to Tynecastle is a non starter. 

 

Honestly - I do believe that in my lifetime we could legitimately build the support to be around 25k and peak the bigger games at 30k. 

 

 

If we were as consistent as Aberdeen had been I have no doubt we could average about 25k and grow. 

 

Aberdeen his a glass ceiling and couldn't take advantage of their position. 

I 100% believe we could and can. 

We should be aiming to become, if looking for a comparison in the smaller leagues- a Feynoord type club. 

 

Well above the rest, sometimes can be a bit shit but also sonetimes give the bigger 2 a run for their money. 

 

To do that, as you say we'll need a bigger capacity. 

 

 

[Rockwell]

28 minutes ago, davemclaren said:

We need to have plans for several different eventualities. Some club have thrown money at stadium redevelopments (  or new builds ) only to find themselves hitying the skids on the pitch and then have significant financial issues. I’m just advocating a cautious and incremental approach. 

Yes a few clubs Raith Falkirk Airdrie and a few others have stadiums with stands that hardly ever see an ar*e  on them when the playing side have fallen apart 

[Bazzas right boot]

2 hours ago, davemclaren said:

History tells us that the chances of improving on,  or  even maintains, our current level of success for anymore than a few seasons is low. We can but hope/dream though. 

Yes, and we'll need to change that. 

 

20k sellouts, 16k + St holders, no bad debt, a team 20 points clear in third and anything between £3-£8m hitting the coffers extra next season is probably as strong a position as any to start that change. 

 

Hope / dreams have nothing to do with it. 😊

Good leadership of the pitch, good mgt and players on it will make it happen. 

 

[Bazzas right boot]

1 hour ago, Sooks said:

If we cut Hibs allocation in order to sell more season tickets to Hearts supporters their fans would scream for them to respond in kind but I doubt Gordon would do it because their crowds are so poor

 

 

Even then, we'd be doing it out for legitimate reasons, they'd be doing it out of spite. 

 

Would sum up hibs class. 

 

Bitter, drunk, drug addled, bitter and defeated. 

[Watt-Zeefuik]

7 hours ago, Bazzas right boot said:

 

That's only for 6 games ( I was being Conservative) if we've grown to the stage where Tynecastle needs expansion we could have more games that are over our current 20k which adds more. 

Not to mention European games, it could easily be 10 + games, if inflation is factored in even at 2% then that figure grows again. 

Add in catering as well. 

 

You could also  lose a whole community or section of possible Hearts fans and all what that brings if they are locked out. 

Very short sighted imo. 

 

Expansion is the way to grow our fan base and income-if we get to that stage, not hiking up season ticket prices while alienating any future possible Hearts fans. 

 

We are a repeat of this season of having this problem imo. 

20k was always going to be tight for a successful Hearts side. 

It could all go to shit on the park tho and we'll be ok. 

 

Several years ago I ran numbers and came up with selling a seat 6 games for payoff in roughly 10 years. The logic was based on the cost of stands going up around Europe that were nothing but seats, toilets, food stalls, and other bare essentials. In other words, no hospitality suite, no club offices, no pub, etc. In like 2014/2015 time, construction costs were running around £1k/seat for those kinds of stands.

 

Something like this:

5000 extra seats x £25 average cost / seat / game x 6 games per season = £750,000 new revenue per season

Over 10 years that's £7.5m in new revenue, plus a bit in increased ticket prices as you go, minus financing costs and you've got roughly £5m in construction costs financed.

If it cost you roughly £1k/seat to build the stand with those 5k seats, you've got your costs sorted and all additional sales are new revenue for the club

 

But this doesn't really work anymore. It implies no loss of current seats, which if we rebuilt the Wheatfield obviously would mean tearing down 6k seats to put up 12k or some such. (This made more sense when we were talking about the new main, as annual maintenance costs on the old stand were starting to approach the half of total ticket income from the stand itself!) Also, those numbers are now moot as construction costs have gone through the roof everywhere, and ticket prices (thankfully) haven't kept pace.

While there's still some viable prospects in the long run, the calculations now make it clear that it's effectively impossible in the short run.  I'm putting these in the Spoiler tag as this post is getting long.

 

Spoiler

First, you've got to cover the cost of working a deal with NBDC for the ethanol and for the land behind the current Wheatfield and demo of the current stand. This could be £5-10m easily.

 

Then there's the cost of the seats. £1k/seat, even when it was applicable, was for a single tier, fairly bare bones stadium (like the current Wheatfield) on clean ground. Man United is adding 15,000 seats to Old Trafford for a cost of £200m, which is £13k per seat. (This site has some interesting numbers, but notably these are for complete stadiums, which also includes the often expensive club offices, training facilities, hospitality, etc.: https://www.footballbenchmark.com/library/stadium_developments_the_boom_continues) I think if we were starting planning today, we could keep costs on a new stand around £2k/seat, but that would be tricky.

 

Also, the Wheatfield is our last, best shot of expanding capacity of Tynecastle. We don't want to do it then run out of space again. I suppose we could build a stand with the footings laid for a second tier on it or some such, but that seems a waste. Anything less than a total capacity of 26-27k would be a waste of time, I think, so let's run the calculations for a new 16k seat stand, which would be enormous, but at least has nice round numbers like 10k new seats and 30k total capacity. That's £32m in construction costs. Add in legal, planning, and unexpected costs and you're easily looking at a £40m+ development, maybe as high as £50m. YIKES!

 

What would it take to pay for that? Doing the math, working backwards.

 

£45m financed over 10 years would cost the club about £5m/year in payments. Because only 10k of those seats are new revenue (the Wheatfield has 6k money-making seats that are fully paid for), each new seat would need to generate £500 per season If the seats in the new stand sold for an average of £30, that's 18 games/season we'd need to sell out the new, enormous stand just to break even. Of course, after the 10th season, it starts to be a cash cow for us, but that's a huge financial burden to put on the club with the need to sell far more seats than we currently do!

 

So what would need to change? The ratio between construction costs and ticket prices would need to narrow back to where it was 8 years ago, which probably means more expensive seats but also may mean construction costs drop a little as pandemic and Russia and Evergiven supply chain issues sort themselves out. We would probably need to get to a point where we have more season ticket demand than availability, and where single game tickets become hard to get. At some point the Wheatfield may no longer be fit for purpose, so it no longer becomes a question of new revenue but of not losing revenue, so that cost gets spread over 16k seats (or whatever the new stand actually would be). And finally, we would need several seasons like next one with cash windfalls from Europe where we can take a few million every season and set it aside in a stadium reserve fund of sorts.

 

All of the above in the spoiler is the very long way of saying, it's possible to imagine a scenario where in 10-15 years a much bigger Wheatfield starts to make sense. But it very much doesn't right now.

 

Edited April 25, 2022 by Led Tasso
Just adding some boldface

[Sooks]

5 minutes ago, Bazzas right boot said:

 

 

Even then, we'd be doing it out for legitimate reasons, they'd be doing it out of spite. 

 

Would sum up hibs class. 

 

Bitter, drunk, drug addled, bitter and defeated. 

Yes I totally agree

[davemclaren]

15 minutes ago, Bazzas right boot said:

Yes, and we'll need to change that. 

 

20k sellouts, 16k + St holders, no bad debt, a team 20 points clear in third and anything between £3-£8m hitting the coffers extra next season is probably as strong a position as any to start that change. 

 

Hope / dreams have nothing to do with it. 😊

Good leadership of the pitch, good mgt and players on it will make it happen. 

 

Perhaps. 😄

[OTT]

I’d be more interested in the home stands volume of tickets/% unsold. 
 

The roseburn is the away end, even if against the diddies half goes to us, I suspect people would prefer to sit among Hearts fans rather than right next to the away fans. 
 

Beyond all that, I’d much rather see the big games experience maximised. **** the diddy games. A couple thousand unsold isn’t going to make anything worse. But could really let us print money in the bigger fixtures (Europe/OF/Derbies). Even if we only went up a couple thousand we’d still be creating a gap in finances between ourselves and Hibs/Aberdeen. 
 

Whatever we do has to be economically viable, but we made a decision to stay at Tynie so expansion will require significant will power from the board to overcome the various issues. 

[JALBO]

1 hour ago, Mr Sifter said:

Surprised this has been posted without any reply. I’ve just checked the council website and there’s nowt there

 

Edit - Do you mean an application will be submitted THIS Friday? 🤔

 

I replied! 😁

[Bazzas right boot]

35 minutes ago, davemclaren said:

Perhaps. 😄

 

 

It's a strong a position we'll ever be in to get consistency. 

 

Whether we do it or not is the exciting part. 

[davemclaren]

1 minute ago, Bazzas right boot said:

 

 

It's a strong a position we'll ever be in to get consistency. 

 

Whether we do it or not is the exciting part. 

It’s certainly our strongest season on and off the park since the early Romanov days. Certainly hope it continues. 

[Bazzas right boot]

45 minutes ago, Led Tasso said:

 

Several years ago I ran numbers and came up with selling a seat 6 games for payoff in roughly 10 years. The logic was based on the cost of stands going up around Europe that were nothing but seats, toilets, food stalls, and other bare essentials. In other words, no hospitality suite, no club offices, no pub, etc. In like 2014/2015 time, construction costs were running around £1k/seat for those kinds of stands.

 

Something like this:

5000 extra seats x £25 average cost / seat / game x 6 games per season = £750,000 new revenue per season

Over 10 years that's £7.5m in new revenue, plus a bit in increased ticket prices as you go, minus financing costs and you've got roughly £5m in construction costs financed.

If it cost you roughly £1k/seat to build the stand with those 5k seats, you've got your costs sorted and all additional sales are new revenue for the club

 

But this doesn't really work anymore. It implies no loss of current seats, which if we rebuilt the Wheatfield obviously would mean tearing down 6k seats to put up 12k or some such. (This made more sense when we were talking about the new main, as annual maintenance costs on the old stand were starting to approach the half of total ticket income from the stand itself!) Also, those numbers are now moot as construction costs have gone through the roof everywhere, and ticket prices (thankfully) haven't kept pace.

While there's still some viable prospects in the long run, the calculations now make it clear that it's effectively impossible in the short run.  I'm putting these in the Spoiler tag as this post is getting long.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

First, you've got to cover the cost of working a deal with NBDC for the ethanol and for the land behind the current Wheatfield and demo of the current stand. This could be £5-10m easily.

 

Then there's the cost of the seats. £1k/seat, even when it was applicable, was for a single tier, fairly bare bones stadium (like the current Wheatfield) on clean ground. Man United is adding 15,000 seats to Old Trafford for a cost of £200m, which is £13k per seat. (This site has some interesting numbers, but notably these are for complete stadiums, which also includes the often expensive club offices, training facilities, hospitality, etc.: https://www.footballbenchmark.com/library/stadium_developments_the_boom_continues) I think if we were starting planning today, we could keep costs on a new stand around £2k/seat, but that would be tricky.

 

Also, the Wheatfield is our last, best shot of expanding capacity of Tynecastle. We don't want to do it then run out of space again. I suppose we could build a stand with the footings laid for a second tier on it or some such, but that seems a waste. Anything less than a total capacity of 26-27k would be a waste of time, I think, so let's run the calculations for a new 16k seat stand, which would be enormous, but at least has nice round numbers like 10k new seats and 30k total capacity. That's £32m in construction costs. Add in legal, planning, and unexpected costs and you're easily looking at a £40m+ development, maybe as high as £50m. YIKES!

 

What would it take to pay for that? Doing the math, working backwards.

 

£45m financed over 10 years would cost the club about £5m/year in payments. Because only 10k of those seats are new revenue (the Wheatfield has 6k money-making seats that are fully paid for), each new seat would need to generate £500 per season If the seats in the new stand sold for an average of £30, that's 18 games/season we'd need to sell out the new, enormous stand just to break even. Of course, after the 10th season, it starts to be a cash cow for us, but that's a huge financial burden to put on the club with the need to sell far more seats than we currently do!

 

So what would need to change? The ratio between construction costs and ticket prices would need to narrow back to where it was 8 years ago, which probably means more expensive seats but also may mean construction costs drop a little as pandemic and Russia and Evergiven supply chain issues sort themselves out. We would probably need to get to a point where we have more season ticket demand than availability, and where single game tickets become hard to get. At some point the Wheatfield may no longer be fit for purpose, so it no longer becomes a question of new revenue but of not losing revenue, so that cost gets spread over 16k seats (or whatever the new stand actually would be). And finally, we would need several seasons like next one with cash windfalls from Europe where we can take a few million every season and set it aside in a stadium reserve fund of sorts.

 

All of the above in the spoiler is the very long way of saying, it's possible to imagine a scenario where in 10-15 years a much bigger Wheatfield starts to make sense. But it very much doesn't right now.

 

 

 

Makes sense. 

 

If we used Murrayfield for a season and have bigger crowds there it could also help reduce the short term impact and even make money to  help reduce the pay back term. 

 

Or it could cost us even more  if the rent was high. 

 

 

 

[Bazzas right boot]

1 minute ago, davemclaren said:

It’s certainly our strongest season on and off the park since the early Romanov days. Certainly hope it continues. 

 

Stronger imo. 

Strongest ever in the clubs history .... 

 

New stand, higher capacity, no or little bad debt the advantage v romanov times.

 

[davemclaren]

3 minutes ago, Bazzas right boot said:

 

Stronger imo. 

Strongest ever in the clubs history .... 

 

New stand, higher capacity, no or little bad debt the advantage v romanov times.

 

Possibly since the early 60s ( I agree that even in the early Vlad days the financial position was very murky ) though the economics of football in the 60s can’t really be compared. 

[Hackney Hearts]

10 minutes ago, Bazzas right boot said:

New stand, higher capacity, no or little bad debt the advantage v romanov times.

 

Oh and Ann Budge isn't insane, which can only help.

 

(although some of the club's current co-owners may be)

[Mr Sifter]

2 hours ago, maroon66 said:

2 hours ago, maroon66 said:

It has to be validated and payed before it's in the public domain.

Cheers for the reply mate. Just eager to see the application as it’ll no doubt show how/where the screens would be fitted eh. Whether that’s on the side of the Wheatfield/Main stands, or like the Watford video and suspended from the Roseburn/Gorgie trusses I don’t know (I’d prefer the trusses if honest). But aye, I was just interested to see what the plans showed. I’ll keep my eye on the planning portal 👍🏼
 

35 minutes ago, JALBO said:

 

I replied! 😁

 

Sorry Jalbo, never saw your reply as I’ve got you on ignore mate (joke🤪) 👍🏼

[JALBO]

33 minutes ago, Mr Sifter said:

Cheers for the reply mate. Just eager to see the application as it’ll no doubt show how/where the screens would be fitted eh. Whether that’s on the side of the Wheatfield/Main stands, or like the Watford video and suspended from the Roseburn/Gorgie trusses I don’t know (I’d prefer the trusses if honest). But aye, I was just interested to see what the plans showed. I’ll keep my eye on the planning portal 👍🏼
 

 

Sorry Jalbo, never saw your reply as I’ve got you on ignore mate (joke🤪) 👍🏼

🤣

[RobNox]

1 hour ago, Bazzas right boot said:

 

Stronger imo. 

Strongest ever in the clubs history .... 

 

New stand, higher capacity, no or little bad debt the advantage v romanov times.

 

Don't forget FOH donations and benefactors contributions also

[Bazzas right boot]

59 minutes ago, Hackney Hearts said:

 

Oh and Ann Budge isn't insane, which can only help.

 

(although some of the club's current co-owners may be)

 

😂😂😂😂

[Bazzas right boot]

52 minutes ago, Mr Sifter said:

Cheers for the reply mate. Just eager to see the application as it’ll no doubt show how/where the screens would be fitted eh. Whether that’s on the side of the Wheatfield/Main stands, or like the Watford video and suspended from the Roseburn/Gorgie trusses I don’t know (I’d prefer the trusses if honest). But aye, I was just interested to see what the plans showed. I’ll keep my eye on the planning portal 👍🏼
 

 

Sorry Jalbo, never saw your reply as I’ve got you on ignore mate (joke🤪) 👍🏼

 

 

Hopefully not two on the same side like the idiots in leeeef. 

That done my head in. 

 

Opposite stands, corners butt not two on the same side with none in the other two corners. 

****ing bat shit crazy stuff. 

 

They even hibsd that. 

****ing clowns. 

 

[Fort Vallance]

3 hours ago, Poseidon said:

Don't know if that's a rhetorical question or not but yeah, they have cut ours on the rare occasion we've done it to them 

I actually meant cut off their nose to spite their face. So yes it was rhetorical. 

[chrisyboy7]

I wonder if you can just add more to the Wheatfield and Roseburn and keep them the way they are?

[Jambo.Craig]

Don't post here often but I do read Kickback almost every day. 

 

I couldn't help imagining an extended Wheatfield with impressive views of Edinburgh and the Castle. 

 

Another 8,000 seats in the Wheatfield would be lovely.